Manchester couple has clear memories of years spent in Taiwan
Published: September 25, 2005
Peter and Lee Prommel can’t help but get excited when they talk about the three years the couple worked as missionaries.
Lee Prommel can’t stop laughing as she tells a tale of being attacked by a turkey.
Peter Prommel still shakes his head in amazement as he recalls how twin beds where stacked upon each other and a ladder then placed on the top bunk so that a streetlight bulb could be replaced in Taitung, where the couple were working.
The memories are clear, crisp and vivid, almost if they had happened yesterday.
Yet the 84-year-old Peter’s and 81-year-old Lee’s life-changing three years in Taiwan occurred more than two decades ago.
“It happened a long time ago, but it seems like yesterday,” Lee Prommel says. “I guess it’s because what happened back then is still a part of our lives today.”
As the Manchester couple, who will be married 62 years in October, like to tell it, it was God’s calling that led them to Taiwan.
It was 1978 and the couple was living in North Jersey. Attending church one Sunday, the couple heard a missionary speak of the need for help, possibly an older couple to assist him and his wife, who were directors of a children’s home in Taiwan.
Called the Home of Onesiphorus (now Kids Alive), the home ministered to the mental, physical and spiritual needs of handicapped children of school age.
The director, John Ford, showed slides “not just of a single home, but of a compound that consisted of three dormitories, (that) housed 80 children, plus three house mothers in each,” Lee Prommel explains. As the slides also showed, there was also a building with offices for the director, receptionist and nurse, as well as an indoor recreational area. In addition, the compound featured a laundry building, outdoor swimming pool, baseball field and chapel.
“Needless to say, we were impressed,” Peter Prommel recalls. “So after the service, we asked John Ford what he needed.”
The missionary’s response stunned the couple, who were in their 50s at the time.
“We’re badly in need of a nurse and a bus driver,” the couple recall Ford replying.
What Ford didn’t know — couldn’t know — was that Lee Prommel was a registered nurse, and Peter Prommel drove a school bus for special-needs children.
“We immediately decided that God was leading us to a mission field in Taiwan,” Peter Prommel says. “And we knew that it fit into what we could do at this stage in our lives.”
With their two sons, David and Robert, out of the house with families of their own, Lee and Peter Prommel spent the next two years raising financial support for their missionary work, selling their North Haledon home, packing up personal and household items to ship to Taiwan, selling or giving away larger items to friends and neighbors.
“Some people thought we were a little crazy,” Peter Prommel says. “But we knew we weren’t.”
And while their life was comfortable, working in Taiwan, Lee Prommel says, gave the couple a chance “to have our life count for something.”
Before heading to Taiwan in February 1980, the Prommels took a weeklong vacation in Bermuda. While there, they met up with a couple from Pennsylvania.
In the course of the conversation, the Prommels’ missionary work came up, as did the other couple’s desire to adopt a child, perhaps a child from Taiwan.
“At the end of the week, the couple gave us their address and telephone number,” Lee Prommel says, “and we went our separate ways, perhaps forever, perhaps not.”
In late February the couple boarded a China Airlines 747 plane. After 21 hours, including two stopovers and waiting time in Customs, the duo arrived in Taipai.
After a daylong tour of Taipai, which Peter Prommel describes as “New York City-like,” the couple once again boarded a plane. This time, their destination was Taitung and the Home of Onesiphorus.
Mary Ellen Ford picked up the Prommels and her husband, John, at the small airport in a 20-passenger bus. After a short tour of Taitung, she started on the 14-mile drive to their destination.
“There at the gates of this beautiful group of white homes, dormitories, offices and chapels was a group of Chinese kids singing, “There’s a welcome here, there’s a Christian welcome here,’ ” Lee recalls, tears welling in her eyes. “We were overwhelmed.”
After spending some time with the Fords, the Prommels returned to Taipei for a six-week crash course in Mandarin Chinese. “We learned enough to communicate, but we could never hold a conversation,” Peter Prommel says. “I think we were a little old to learn.”
Returning to the home, the couple quickly fell in love with the work they were doing. More quickly, they fell in love with the children.
“Many of the children were there because they had polio,” Lee Prommel explains, “and in many cases, their families couldn’t or wouldn’t deal with it.”
As a nurse, Lee was on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week to the home’s 80 children. Peter would bus the children to three different schools as well as the hospital when needed. He also delivered hot lunches to the school and brought the kids back to the home after school.
“After school was playtime, and though many of the kids wore braces and used crutches, nothing could keep them from swimming, playing on the playground or playing baseball,” Peter says. “Their spirit was just remarkable.”
The children’s love of life led the couple to secretly pay for the surgery for one young girl, who got around on her hands and knees.
“Seeing her walk with braces, that was the most wonderful sight,” Lee says. “She was a little girl that deserved a chance.”
After being in Taiwan for two years, the Prommels heard about a young, unmarried Taiwanese woman who was considering putting her baby up for adoption. The Prommels immediately thought of the couple from Pennsylvania. The couple had applied to the home where the baby was going to be placed, and soon learned they had been selected as the adoptive parents.
Shortly after the birth of the baby, the Prommels approached John Ford and told the director that they would love to bring the baby to the United States and give her to the couple.
And at the end of 1982, the Prommels returned to the United States and placed the baby in the arms of her parents at John F. Kennedy International Airport. After a brief visit in the States, the couple returned to Taiwan for another 18 months, continuing their work with the children.
The couple returned to the United States for good in mid-1983 with a lifetime of memories and pictures.
There’s the story of Lee coming face-to-face with a cobra and being knocked down by a motorcycle. There was the earthquake, the hottest summer on record and the coldest winter on record.
There are pictures of Peter driving the bus and Lee in her nursing uniform. And there are pictures of the children — literally hundreds of pictures.
“They were such a big part of our life, the part that gave us meaning,” Lee says.
There’s also pictures of the little girl that they brought to the United States, the little girl who is now getting married next summer.
“And we’re invited to the wedding,” Lee says. “That’s wonderful.”
As residents of Crestwood Manor, an assisted living facility, the trips Lee and Peter Prommel take these days are closer to home — a visit to their great-granddaughter in North Jersey, a weekend in Lancaster.
“We have our memories,” says Peter, who leads the choir at Crestwood Manor, just as he led the choir at the children’s home. “And we know in our hearts that we did what God wanted us to do.”
“And for that,” his wife adds softly, “we are truly blessed.”
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